Released last year to universal critical acclaim, Blue Prince sees players venturing through Mt. Holly as the heir to a giant, mysterious mansion. If they can reach Room 46, the inheritance is all theirs – the only problem is that the mansion’s layout changes from day to day. You start with a choice of rooms in each run and must chart your way through.

Each room functions differently, from recovering steps to unlocking useful tools and currency. With each playthrough, you’ll discover more clues about the mansion. It’s even possible that the mystery doesn’t end after finding Room 46, but you’ll have to delve deep into its interiors to learn more.

Blue Prince is available for PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC alongside Game Pass and PlayStation Plus Extra/Premium. You can check out our review, where we gave it a ten out of ten for its unique gameplay mechanics, art direction and near-bottomless well of secrets.

It passed two million players as of September 2025, but despite its incredible reception, developer Dogubomb has no plans for a sequel.

Actually playing ROUTINE, however, instantly shows you where all of that development time and money went, since it’s essentially one of the most unique horror games to have come out in a while. Now, don’t get me wrong, there isn’t a lot happening in ROUTINE that we haven’t already seen in other games before. A lot of the gameplay is just slow-paced exploration and puzzle solving before you run into robotic enemies that you have to run away or hide from. What sets it apart from others, however, is its emphasis on making you feel your character’s body over the course of gameplay. To explain this, however, we’ll also have to take a more granular look at how it controls and plays.

"Just like how it wants you to be aware of all your body parts, the game also has an emphasis on having a more naturalistic UI."

ROUTINE isn’t exactly complicated when it comes to its controls. You get the WASD movement key cluster along with two important keys that affect how you control your body: crouch and lean. Holding down the lean button, as you might expect, lets you lean to either side. Unlike other games that also feature a lean button, however, ROUTINE also lets you use it with the forward or backwards movement buttons, which in turn let you stand on your tip toes or go fully prone to try and get your hands on things that might be in harder-to-reach places. While this might sound like a gimmick, the mechanics are used quite well throughout the game, since there aren’t really any objective markers or UI elements that let you know what you should be looking for.

Full-body awareness is a major gameplay aspect of ROUTINE, and just like how it wants you to be aware of all your body parts, the game also has an emphasis on having a more naturalistic UI. This means that you don’t really get a HUD where you might keep track of your CAT’s (we’ll get to that) battery level or your health. You don’t even get a button prompt for opening doors, in fact. Rather, you have to interact with computers to open doors, and this computer use takes a page right out of 2017’s Prey in giving you a real mouse cursor that you have to use to navigate the system. This adherence to not offering any “gameified’ elements like a HUD goes a long way when it comes to setting up the game’s overall atmosphere.

Speaking of which, one of the best things about ROUTINE is just how good it looks. Fidelity was clearly an important aspect of development, and developer Lunar Software did a phenomenal job of creating a moon base that looks lived-in. To accomplish this, the title goes for a very 1980s-inspired look for its in-universe technology. This means that, rather than having sleek flat screens, computer terminals are large kiosks with low-resolution curved CRT displays and big, blocky buttons. All of the technology is like this, including your own CAT – the Cosmonaut Assistant Tool – which also happens to be your primary method of interacting with the world aside from using computers.

"Going deeper into the base, like entering the living quarters, on the other hand, gives you a great idea of just how out-of-hand things have gotten here"

The visuals go a step further by offering plenty of fun contrast in the different parts of the lunar base that you explore. You start out in ROUTINE’s equivalent of its entry way, for instance, and while things are in disarray, there isn’t really too much wrong there aside from some suitcases being strewn open on the ground and a lack of anyone else in the vicinity. Going deeper into the base, like entering the living quarters, on the other hand, gives you a great idea of just how out-of-hand things have gotten here; there are broken-down doors and blood splatters all over the place. Heading to the abandoned mall will then present you with a more classical style of horror where light and darkness are more pronounced.

Audio is similarly top notch, with ROUTINE opting to not really have much in the way of background music. Rather, the title is more focused on providing you the sense of you actually being in the lunar base and exploring it. This means that you only really hear sounds that your character could feasibly hear, be it the creaking of a loose tile, the opening of a door, the clattering of a tiny robot walking around, or the heavier stomps of a larger robot chasing you.

The story of ROUTINE isn’t a particularly complex one, but it is told in a more twisted way than you might expect. There aren’t really any cutscenes that are going to help you figure out what’s going on. Rather, the entirety of the game’s plot is uncovered through the player’s own exploration and environmental storytelling. You often get large parts of the story beats happening through recordings left behind by other people who might have once lived and worked at the lunar base, and you’ll often find notes, forms, books, and various paperwork that will let you know what you should be doing and where you should be going.

"The central story is fine enough and does a great job of constantly pushing you forward"

Things start off with you waking up in the isolation chamber of the lunar base after having slept through your seven days of quarantine. On waking up, you’re prompted to stretch your body, get your spacesuit helmet and ID badge, and step out the door to marvel at the wonders of the moon base. What you do find when you step out of the door is a base that has seemingly been abandoned and is in complete disarray. Over the course of the game, you realise the threat posed by the robots that once worked as the lunar base’s security force, and have a singular main objective: shut down the system powering the robots.

While the central story is fine enough and does a great job of constantly pushing you forward, some of the smaller stories you get to read about or listen to through old recordings left behind tend to be a lot more interesting. These stories often also give you more questions that you will want to find answers for, like what exactly made the security systems turn on the lunar base’s human denizens to begin with, when all of this started, and even the most basic questions of why you’re on the base to begin with and how you can escape. However, answers to these questions are sparse, and are entirely dependent on your own sense of exploration.

To help you deal with this, you’re given a single item: the Cosmonaut Assistance Tool – the CAT – which is basically your omni-tool for dealing with most of the obstacles in your path. The CAT can be used to diagnose computers that might be too messed up to open doors, clear up the distorted signal coming from some speakers to let you better listen to an old message, or even just power up an electrical box so that it can open a door. This ability of the CAT to release bolts of electric energy can also be used as a makeshift weapon – albeit not a particularly good one. The robotic enemies you face in ROUTINE can’t really be killed with the CAT, and it tends to take several shots to even stun them. This is especially problematic since the CAT’s battery can only hold three shots, and you don’t really get to carry spares.

"What makes it a truly excellent experience is its emphasis on making you feel like you’re really there"

That’s not to say that the CAT can’t eventually become a more useful weapon, however. Depending on your own exploratory efforts, you might find some upgrades for the tool that can allow it to fire shots with more energy, making it a more effective way to stun the menacing robots. However, ultimately, your best bet is to still run away and maybe even hide; these robots will stop at nothing to get you, and you can’t really survive more than a single hit from them. A second hit will outright kill you.

ROUTINE is an interesting horror experience, and even if you ignore its incredible development story that involved two game engine migrations, is still one I’d recommend to fans of the genre. The title isn’t particularly challenging, and even though you don’t get any markers or maps to help you navigate, it’s still a fairly linear experience. However, what makes it a truly excellent experience is its emphasis on making you feel like you’re really there, be it from a general lack of a video game-styled UI, to even how you interact with the world and can do things like check under couches for a spare CAT battery. The only major downside here is the fact that the robot enemies’ overall hardiness means that combat isn’t really an option here, and while running around and hiding is always effective, it’s not the style of horror some players may personally enjoy. Despite that, however, ROUTINE still feels like a game I’m glad to have experienced.

This game was reviewed on PC.

But what happened over the course of the thirteen years since the game was first announced? How much has it changed in the process? What’s so special about it that has us quite excited to make it to at least one of its endings before the holidays are done?

We’re going to dive into all of that, showing you why this one’s worth your attention if you’re a fan of horror titles or games that get very immersive indeed. Join us as we examine a title that has been quite a pleasant surprise.

A Warm Welcome

When we first heard of Routine, it was at Gamescom 2012, and it seemed like a very interesting title at the time. It brought a lot of familiar elements from the best of media in the horror genre to a passion project that saw its lead designer, Aaron Foster, set out to bring his childhood passions together into an experience, and Lunar Software was born once he began to expand his team.

Taking place on the Moon, Routine puts you in the shoes of a nameless protagonist trying to piece together a series of events on a desolate base, braving sentient robots that seem quite insistent on preventing you from going any further. We’re going to dive into why it’s as good as we think it is in just a bit, but before that, let’s take a look at why it’s taken thirteen long years for the game to make its way to its players.

Although things were looking good for Routine following its 2012 announcement, it was hit by what would be the first delay in a long line of them. Nearly four years and multiple announcements of delayed release windows later, 2016 finally gave the game a March 2017 release date. We were as excited back then as we are now to play a game that looked so darn good in all of its promotional materials.

But another blow came to eager fans in April 2018, with the developers expressing dissatisfaction with the narrative’s endings, and further delaying the game’s release. With the team unable to agree on a mutually acceptable option, Routine would be on a very long hiatus until development would resume in 2020. With a lot of the funding for the project coming from within the team, financial constraints would also be a factor at this stage.

The game shifted to Unreal Engine 5 once its development resumed, a move that seems to be the right one based on our time with its early hours. The rest is now old news. The game was announced once again in 2022 at the Summer Games Fest and is finally in our hands.

Sci-Fi Scares

The desolate station you explore in Routine is quite a nasty place. But it’s also a world that’s been cleverly designed to balance scares with a good amount of interactive elements that make exploration a fairly unpredictable experience that does play it safe in order to ensure optimal balancing, but does a good job of keeping you on your toes nonetheless.

It took me a while to get into the habit of keeping my eyes peeled as I carefully made my way through the adventure. That’s because the station’s security system really doesn’t like you and sends its robots to remove you from the board. Although I was initially relieved to know that it could activate only one robot at a time, my elation was short-lived.

That’s because you never know when and where it could choose to activate a robot. Coupled with procedurally generated levels, that’s a recipe for a game of cat and mouse that decidedly places you in the latter role, and at quite the disadvantage. It’s enough to make the sound of robots’ thumping footsteps set your pulse racing as you try to find a way to safely mitigate the threat they pose.

With no HUD and permadeath being an ever-present problem that’s always a nagging thought at the back of your mind as you try to make sense of the world around you, Routine doesn’t shy away from defying mainstream traditions despite being the first release after a very turbulent period for the studio.

It’s clear in its vision, which is to present an unforgiving world that seems hell-bent on preventing you from uncovering the secrets it’s trying to hide. Even the tools it gives you in its attempt to even the odds require a lot of strategy to be effective against your enemies, and its limited battery capacity means you’re going to want to have a contingency plan in place whenever you decide to use it in battle.

However, Routine could have easily fallen prey to a frustrating loop of gathering enough supplies to make a run for your next objective, with failure resulting in some tedious farming as a result. However, the things you need to proceed are never quite far from you, but finding them requires some diligence on your part.

The gameplay loop in Routine is thus suitably tense and fraught with enough peril to make playing through the adventure a riveting, satisfying experience that’s helped along with some excellent art direction and creative flourishes.

An Unreal World

The Moon was always going to be the stage for this adventure, being an area of fascination for Foster and also a location that could convey a sense of loneliness and desolation in the wake of a series of unfortunate events that the player must uncover. While the jury is still out on how the story ultimately plays out, we’re certainly enjoying taking it one painstaking step at a time. But each of those steps feels so immersive thanks to the game’s retro yet futuristic art direction that really sells the material it’s working with. The enemy designs are also suitably impressive, the robots’ raw speed, size, and strength being evident in the way they toss your player around like a ragdoll if you’re unfortunate enough to let one catch you.

You truly feel vulnerable thanks to how well the experience is presented, the lack of any sort of indicators about your health being a superb touch that makes it all feel very real from moment to moment. On the presentation and visual fronts, this one is definitely a winner. The audio design is similarly good, with heavy silences being broken by the sound of your next encounter so suddenly you can’t help but jump.

The level design is another highlight, with enemies so cleverly hidden away, lying dormant until they are called upon to make your day as miserable as they can manage. It helps that said enemies are quite smart, hunting you down with unerring precision and invading hiding spots with clinical efficiency in their quest to put a premature end to your playthrough.

The entire vibe in Routine comes together quite well, making you feel like even the slightest of errors can have you on the backfoot since death comes with very real consequences. By choosing to make the gameplay loop as intense as it has, Lunar Software has crafted an experience that’s largely been worth the wait.

It makes you hold your breath as you carefully make your way past a dormant automated monstrosity, hoping against hope that it isn’t going to power up and give chase. Just when you think you’ve managed to get away with your espionage, you’re set upon by another, entirely new one that you failed to spot since its buddy was holding your attention.

It’s a game that feels like it’s been worth a thirteen year wait. And that’s saying something for a game that languished in development hell for so long. It’s rare for such titles to turn out okay, and for one to be as great and entertaining as Routine currently is, there were clever decisions made and implemented quite well.

Those decisions seem to have paid off, and we’re hoping that Routine continues to enthrall us as we take on more of its challenges and threats. We’re also wondering if 2025 has any more gems hidden under its sleeve as a year of great games draws to a close.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

According to Ros, this comes down to the fact that he is more interested in making something standalone. He noted that his next project might not even be in the same genre as Blue Prince. Through his works, we’ll also get to see some “overlap” in his different interests, which might lead to his next release having some similarities with Blue Prince, however.

“I can say I will never make a sequel to my work because I love creating something standalone and then going on to something completely different,” said Ros. “It will likely not even be in the same exact genres. I will probably be mixing it up. You’ll start to see overlap. You’ll start to see overlaps with some of my interests. So it will be familiar, and hopefully I’ll inadvertently have things that really worked with Blue Prince that I’ll carry on in terms of at least technicals.”

“But yeah, we’ll see. I’m hesitant to do another 3D game because for my first game, 3D was so difficult. I really wish I did a 2D game. I probably could have done it in five years instead of eight. But yeah, I think it’ll be something totally different.”

Blue Prince is a unique puzzle game that puts players in the shoes of Simon P. Jones who has been tasked with reaching the mysterious 46th room in a 45-room estate. The title revolves around players deciding what the next room should be when they open doors, which in turn then has the potential to reward players with currencies, keys, and help them figure out their next steps depending on how many unopened doors there are.

The plot of Blue Prince is rather unstated, and largely revolves around the legacy left behind by Baron Herbert S. Sinclair, who left Jones as the only heir to his estate on the condition that Jones discovers the estate’s secrets. The storytelling is largely achieved through notes left behind by previous visitors, as well as the general state of rooms when you find them.

The puzzle game is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, and was largely developed solo by Tonda Ros under the name Dogubomb with inspiration by classic illustrated puzzle book Maze: Solve the World’s Most Challenging Puzzle by Christopher Manson. In our own review of Blue Prince, we gave the title a score of 10 out of 10, praising its take on the puzzle-solving genre, striking visuals and great presentation that nails the smaller details.

“The unique take that Blue Prince offers on the puzzle and roguelike genres essentially stands on its own; there has simply never really been a game like it,” we wrote in our review. “The fact that its various puzzles don’t happen to be the kind that will have you start tearing your hair out also makes it an incredibly easy title to recommend even to those that might not really have too many puzzle games before.”

First announced in 2012, ROUTINE is a sci-fi survival horror where players venture through a lunar base filled with dangerous robots. That’s the same year that Borderlands 2, Far Cry 3, Mass Effect 3 and more launched, and almost all of them have received sequels (we don’t talk about Mass Effect: Andromeda).

What separates it from the likes of Alien: Isolation is permadeath. And just in case you think that trial and error through the same environments will save the day, there’s a bit of procedural generation at play. That also applies to the enemies, so you’ll never truly know where they’re coming from on any given run.

While there could be another delay, Lunar Software confirmed in July that development was approaching the “finish line.” It even released some new gameplay, highlighting the hacking mechanics and the importance of stealth.

ROUTINE will be available for PC, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One on release. Check out our interview with the team from 2014 to learn more about its setting and compare how much it’s changed since.

These include DON’T NOD, Hooded Horse, Thunderful, Thunder Lotus, Serenity Forge, Skybound Entertainment, Raw Fury, Pathea, Wired Digital, poncle, and Cult Games. The appearing titles have yet to be confirmed, but we could see the likes of The Lonesome Guild and Aphelion, the former published by DON’T NOD and out later this month. The latter is developed by the same and launching in 2026.

Hooded Horse could showcase Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era, which was suddenly delayed to next year, while Serenity Forge may showcase its horror farming title, Fractured Blooms. How many of these will be available for Game Pass on day one? Time will tell, so stay tuned for more details.

The core premise behind Blue Prince is that you, as protagonist Simon P. Jones, are the heir to the estate left behind by Baron Herbert S. Sinclair. Inheriting his 45-room estate, however, comes with one big condition; Jones must explore the mansion and find a secret 46th room in the estate. To achieve this, there are a few more rules. Jones can’t bring in any outside objects, and he can’t spend a night in the estate. Oh, and the randomised layout of the Sinclair estate resets every morning. Armed with this knowledge, Jones has to set out on excursions into the estate in his attempts to get closer to the Antechamber, which in turn will lead him to further parts of the mansion, including the secret Room 46.

"Not all rooms are created equal, and one of the most important aspects of picking which room to be next is what layout you want."

While the core narrative might seem quite simple, tapping into the classic trope of “spend some time in this mansion to inherit it” that we’ve seen in several stories before, Blue Prince doesn’t simply leave its storytelling to the opening cutscene. Rather, there are plenty of hints and clues about deeper secrets that the Sinclair estate might be hiding, largely left behind through journal entries, written letters, computer logs, and even the existence and state of certain rooms.

Gameplay is one of the areas where Blue Prince manages to get a lot out of little. The controls are fairly simple; you have movement, interactions, and backing out of them, and that’s about it. There is no jumping or crouching here, and the entire game essentially revolves around you walking around, exploring the various rooms of the mansion, interacting with switches or levers, and occasionally reading some notes that were left behind by previous visitors. There is also no combat system in the game, and there aren’t even any threats – aside from your own mistakes – that might cause your run to come to a premature end.

As for the general game structure, you get to explore the Sinclair estate on a room-by-room basis, and once you’re ready to move on, you interact with a door that then gives you three options to choose from for what the next room will be. This is where one of the core puzzle-solving aspects of Blue Prince starts coming into focus. Not all rooms are created equal, and one of the most important aspects of picking which room to be next is what layout you want. While the first room of the estate will always have three doors to choose from, other rooms won’t give you as many options. You also have to balance your desire to have rooms in the right direction with whether you need certain items, like keys, gems or coins, which can then be used up in other rooms.

"Not all rooms are created equal, and one of the most important aspects of picking which room to be next is what layout you want."

Quite a few of the rooms also tend to have their own unique puzzles associated with them. For example, you will be able to find a Security Room quite early in the game, which can give you quite a few hints just by examining the nearby notice board. There’s also a computer, which in turn can give you further hints as well as control over things like how keycard readers might work. The Billiards room, on the other hand, has a math-based puzzle that can reward you with some extra goodies, while the Parlor room has a classic three-box puzzle that tasks you with figuring out which of the boxes has the reward.

Early runs of Blue Prince have a tendency to fail because you’re often still trying to get your bearings and figure things out, and it can be incredibly easy to accidentally create a dead end for yourself with no new doors left to open. This is one of the two failure states possible in the game, the other being you running out of the equivalent of health – steps – which you start each run with 50 of and lose 1 for every room you enter. Aside from these failure states, the fact that there is really no other way to fail means that you are encouraged to experiment quite a bit, be it with testing out what brand new rooms do, or even checking out the outer grounds of the mansion, which tend to hide their own secrets.

There is also a loose progression system in Blue Prince which revolves around you upgrading rooms by finding the appropriate disc in them. These discs can then be used at a security terminal to upgrade a room to offer, for example, more items or even greater healing items to help you recover steps. There is also a meta progression system that revolves around discovering stars through an observatory room, through which different constellations can be observed that then grant boons or curses on your run. None of these progression systems are strictly necessary to play through Blue Prince, however, since your success in the game largely comes down to how well you’re able to lay down rooms and how well you can solve its various puzzles.

"It can be incredibly easy to accidentally create a dead end for yourself with no new doors left to open."

Blue Prince is an incredibly unique game in how it’s able to tie together its approach to puzzle solving and its overall roguelike game structure. You never really feel like you’ve wasted a run on meaningless room choices because you’re constantly learning something new. For example, the fateful run where you finally get to the Antechamber will then lead you to an entirely new set of puzzles, each of which requires its own special rooms that you’re going to have to find. Similarly, there is also a fair bit of environmental storytelling that can be gleaned from the letters left behind as well as just the kinds of rooms that Herbert S. Sinclair had in his mansion. In fact, there are so many little notes that you can find all over the place that even the game itself recommends that you should keep a handwritten notebook nearby while playing.

The presentation also goes a long way in making Blue Prince an absolute joy to play. The title goes for a fairy tale look with thick outlines, excellent use of lighting and sharp contrasts in its use of colours. This makes finding objects that can be interacted with simple, while also not leaving behind any detail might further help with its worldbuilding and storytelling. A nice little detail of the presentation is that, at the end of the run, you get a look at what the manor you ultimately designed would look like with a rough sketch, depending on the rooms you picked and where you placed them. Focus on exploring the western side of the estate and you will inevitably end up with a west-facing manor. Similarly, putting down an observatory will also mean you see the dome of this observatory in the end-of-run screen.

"The presentation also goes a long way in making Blue Prince an absolute joy to play."

The added benefit of this art style is that it doesn’t require a hefty system to run; my PC with an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, 32 GB of DDR5-6000 RAM and an AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT had no troubles with keeping up high frame rates throughout my time with the game, while playing at a resolution of 2560 x 1440.

The audio, on the other hand, has been designed around the central idea of staying out of the way. The game features some faint music in the background, but that just adds to the overall inquisitive atmosphere that it is trying to foster without creating much of a disturbance for you while you’re thinking about a puzzle, for example. The voice acting, as little of it as there is, is also quite great, with Sinclair in particular being voiced quite well in his posthumous letter that kicks off the events of Blue Prince.

The unique take that Blue Prince offers on the puzzle and roguelike genres essentially stands on its own; there has simply never really been a game like it. The fact that its various puzzles don’t happen to be the kind that will have you start tearing your hair out also makes it an incredibly easy title to recommend even to those that might not really have too many puzzle games before.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Quite early on in the title, we get to look at how ROUTINE handles its in-game computer terminals, complete with its own special UI that players will have to navigate. Through this terminal, the player can seemingly upgrade their core tools and get descriptions of the new gameplay options they might open up. The one shown in the gameplay trailer is the C.A.T., which can seemingly be used to neutralise magnetic interference from nearby machines, and even has its own camera and screen. It is worth noting that the C.A.T. is seemingly more of a maintenance tool than a weapon, however.

After the opening parts of the video showcase a quick puzzle being solved by using the C.A.T., the player then finds themselves running through a dark corridor before encountering a room with a computer offering some paths forward. The puzzle design in ROUTINE seems to borrow heavily from real-world computer programming, with the player having to read through various terminals’ diagnostics and error codes, and figuring out how they can then fix these errors by understanding what the codes mean.

The final few moments of the video give us a look at the stealth horror gameplay of ROUTINE, with the player needing to carefully make their way across a room and then a hallway without being spotted by seemingly-hostile robots.

Development on ROUTINE has seemingly been going on for over a decade at this point, since the title was first announced all the way back in 2012. Over the years, developer Lunar Software has been popping up every now and then to release new trailers for the still-in-development horror title, before once more going radio silent to continue work on the game. Back in July, designers and artists Aaron Foster and Jemma Hughes, along with programmer Pete Dissler, reiterated that the game is “still very much in active development”.

Developers of the title acknowledged the studio’s tendency to stay relatively quiet about the game, and largely put it down to the studio’s smaller size, as well as the importance for the developers to keep working on the game.

“Working on ROUTINE has always been a huge undertaking for a team of our size, and because of that, we felt it was important to keep our heads down and focus entirely on finishing ROUTINE,” wrote the developers. “But we are aware of the interest in our work, and we are sorry for any frustration that this may have caused.”

ROUTINE is being developed for PC and Xbox Series X/S, and is slated for release later this year.

In a new Steam Community post, designers/artists Aaron Foster and Jemma Hughes and programmer Pete Dissler acknowledged the long absence. “Working on ROUTINE has always been a huge undertaking for a team of our size, and because of that, we felt it was important to keep our heads down and focus entirely on finishing ROUTINE. But we are aware of the interest in our work, and we are sorry for any frustration that this may have caused.”

The team confirmed that ROUTINE is “still very much in active development” and “We are beginning to approach the finish line for the game. We’ve learned a lot from past experiences. One of those is not to commit to a release window before we’re absolutely sure we can hit it. However, we’re confident that we’ll be able to share more news on that front soon.”

Though the team consists of three employees, Lunar Software has been “fortunate enough to gain the support and expertise of additional contributors during the game’s development. We are super thankful to have worked with a variety of awesome and skilled people over the years!” DOOM composer Mick Gordon is one such contributor, and though he worked on the project for “many years,” he ultimately departed in July 2024 due to “conflicts in his schedule.”

“During his time with us, Mick created many outstanding audio assets that will be featured in the final game and provided invaluable audio direction for ROUTINE. These contributions will now be implemented by a new audio designer and team. Over the years, Mick has been an incredible friend and collaborator, supporting us through thick and thin. We are deeply grateful for his work on ROUTINE and wish him all the best in his future projects.”

ROUTINE is in development for Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and PC. It’s a first-person survival horror title where players explore an abandoned lunar base inhabited by killer robots. Permadeath is a big part of the gameplay loop, and since there’s no way to heal, players must focus on stealth to ultimately survive.

Note: This interview was conducted before the game’s release date.

"Post Trauma is more of a puzzle horror game than a pure survival horror."

Post Trauma takes inspiration from survival horror classics like Silent Hill and Resident Evil, which is an enticing elevator pitch for any fan of the genre, but given the massive boom in popularity that horror games have enjoyed in recent years, what about Post Trauma is it that you’re hoping will catch the eye of the audiences?

The atmosphere, the world, the amazing score that Myuu composed, and our characters. We took inspiration from those games, but we tried to make something our own that hopefully players see has its own personality, and they’ll vibe with it.

The survival horror genre tends to place heavy emphasis on exploration, with interconnected and looping level design that encourages (and often even necessitates) backtracking. Is that something that we can expect to see in Post Trauma as well?

Post Trauma is more of a puzzle horror game than a pure survival horror.

You have to approach each location as a big escape room, so you’ll have to explore each location, find clues and unlock shortcuts. There is some backtracking, but not over long distances.

After you complete a level, the story will move you forward to the next location. When you revisit previously known locations, there will be new challenges for you that do not require information from previous levels.

What can you tell us about the variety in locations that players will be visiting throughout the length of the game?

In trailers, most of what we have shown is the subway station, but we have a lot of the usual places you expect in a horror game, like a school, a hospital or a police station, but we also have some weird levels…

"You have to approach each location as a big escape room"

Speaking of variety, how many different kinds of enemies and monstrosities will players come across in Post Trauma? And moving beyond regular enemies, what is the game’s approach to boss fights?

Excluding bosses, we have at least seven different enemy types in the game and I am planning on adding more and maybe increasing the number of encounters.

There are three boss fights in the game, two of them are actual fights, and the other one is more like an environmental puzzle.

I do want to make it clear that Post Trauma is not a combat-heavy game. There are enemies, they can kill you, and you will lose progress if they do. But the focus of the game is on the atmosphere and the puzzles.

Replayability tends to be a crucial part of survival horror games. What should players expect from Post Trauma on that front, especially with things such as collectibles, unlockables, modes, difficulty levels, and the like?

I have set up the game to support those in future free updates and I have a few in mind. But as of right now, there are no replayability features.

But you can play the game from the start on hard mode, if you want to.

How will Post Trauma tackle combat? Is this a combat-focused experience, or does the game afford players the freedom to approach situations how they wish? And speaking of combat, how many different kinds of weapons can we expect?

This is not a combat-focused experience. After all, most of the time you are playing as an old man who never had to fight for his life.

Outside of bosses and the enemy at the tutorial section, you are not forced to kill any other enemies in the game. But, of course, if an enemy is in a hallway you have to cross multiple times, you will have to deal with the risk and potential of dying if it attacks you.

We have a mix of ranged and melee weapons in the game. Ranged weapons are powerful, but the ammo, I must say, is quite scarce.

"Most of the time you are playing as an old man who never had to fight for his life."

Puzzle design is another core component of any survival horror experience, but games don’t always nail this part, with many finding it difficult to properly balance not holding the players’ hands against not being overly obscure. What has been your approach to puzzles over the course of the game’s development?

We tried not to handhold players too much. You will have to pay attention to your surroundings and take notes, or photos, of the different clues you find around you.

The idea with the puzzles was that, even if you get stuck on one of them, as soon as someone explains the solution, your reaction should be “oh, I was overthinking it! That makes sense”.

If you want to make the puzzles feel rewarding, it is simply not possible to make a puzzle game in which absolutely no one gets stuck. We tried our best to find a good sweet spot, but I prefer it if the player solves nine puzzles and gets stuck on one for a little bit, rather than beating 10 without thinking at all.

Post Trauma has impressed many from a visual perspective, but what was the decision to go with its more modern aesthetic as compared to something like pre-rendered backgrounds, especially given the game’s nature as a throwback survival horror experience?

I am the type of player who, if you give me a good photo mode in a game, I will spend more time taking screenshots than actually playing the game. Doing a game with fixed cameras was hard, but I also had a lot of fun with it.

Post Trauma started as a solo dev journey, and that dictated a lot of the decision-making. Contrary to what a lot of people believe, doing a game with pre-rendered backgrounds is harder than doing it this way, and with pre-rendered backgrounds we couldn’t do a lot of the camera shots we did. In a lot of places, the camera moves with you and the player can influence the camera view a little bit.

Roughly how long will an average playthrough of Post Trauma be?

It will depend a lot on your playstyle. I have seen players beat the game as fast as five hours and I have seen others beat it in more than 10, but most players, I believe, will take around six or seven hours.